The Crossing
by Barbara Lightner
CHARACTERS
AISLARA: an old woman crossing the desert near the U.S.-Mexican border; hallucinatory; weak from exposure but indomitable.
PROFETA: a choral figure as in Greek tragedy with a point of view beyond that of the other characters; Cassandra-like; haunted, haunting.
EL OTRO LADO: the voice of the desert, Mexican side; confused, contradictory; poetic, nationalistic; the machismo of the conquistador.
THE OTHER SIDE: the voice of the desert, U. S. side: confused, contradictory; prosaic, nativist; the cocksureness of Manifest Destiny.
The characters move with broad, angular gestures similar to what one might see in certain forms of contemporary modern dance.
TIME
The present
THE SETTING
The Sonoran desert along the Arizona-Mexican border. Several scenes are made up of the flashbacks of the old woman that go back to her crossing the desert as a young woman to come to the United States, and to her earlier deportation. Current scenes, interposed and confused with those of the past, represent her struggles to survive and to get to her daughter and family in the U.S.
The old woman’s story is interwoven with actions taken against migrants by U.S. President Eisenhower in his 1949 Operation Wetback and by early 21st century anti-immigrant policies and practices. Profeta sets certain scenes of resistance.
The desert is represented by a strip of desert-brown cloth, 3 feet wide, that runs slightly diagonally across the stage. The U.S. and the Mexican desert characters are at each end of the cloth and weave, bobble, and snap it as may be appropriate to the action in the play.
THE CROSSING
(The play opens with intensely brilliant lighting, discomfiting, that suggests a torturous sun. The strip of desert cloth is being lifted up and down, weaving haphazardly, unevenly.)
THE OTHER SIDE
(As the U.S. desert voice speaks, the desert cloth is flapped more vigorously)
Ach! The stench of brown, ach! Mexico. A pestilence. God bless America!
EL OTRO LADO
(As the Mexican desert voice speaks, the desert cloth is snapped ever more harshly)
You make no sense, gringo. We are America. God bless the Mexico of America! You gringo, will see brown.
PROFETA
Two truths approach each other. What good can come of it when men become conquistadores, a heavy boot upon the neck of place and time?
(Desert cloth is settled into a gentle motion as Aislara enters staggering, panting, arms up begging the air)
AISLARA
Water. Santo Pollero, guardian angel, guide me. Safe. Please. To the other side, al otro lado. Now and in my hour of need. Water this desert, Pollero. My mind. It splits, wood to ax. Sun claws my face. Water.
PROFETA
The treachery of this desert holds skeletons, not guardian angels. There is no water here where the stars have disappeared into its heat. The Milky Way will find no solace along this devil’s highway—El Camino del Diablo. Look! as this swallowing desert leads to such skeletons as what I fear is death once more upon us.
AISLARA
Oh, I am lost, estoy perdida. This heat-and-devil land. The guide goes on away. Perdida.
(The two voices of the desert speak in unison, and separately)
EL OTRO LADO THE OTHER SIDE
This is no place for old women. This is no place for old women.
Come home!
Go back!
Your dugs dried up Your dugs dried up
dragging the desert
scrub.
scraped by this desert’s plant
the Crucifixion Thorn.
You are lost, vieja.
Vieja, old woman, you are lost.
Go back!
Come home!
PROFETA
Mind splinters among lost days. Death is Christ-crossed by faith that does not save us from the scavenger coyote.
AISLARA
Not home. Not back. My guide, el coyote. Duplicidad….
EL OTRO LADO
Duplicitous he could be but never let him leave your sight, el coyote, your guide, your desert hope. He knows the desert way. Without him you are lost.
AISLARA
(Her mind wandering, as she crawls slowly along the front of the desert strip)
Si, the lost, los desaparecidos. Old, vieja. (As if one word) Lost old. Here. To keep up, lo imposible. (As if one word) Slow old.
PROFETA
A weakened traveler brought into the fire of a destroying sun where even spit will dry before it falls to ground. Survival here is to the few, which I augur not from signs of death aloft in mute omens of countries that defy each other. She who loses strength must sure be culled, cut out and left behind, so others may go on.
AISLARA
(Distraught, terrified, frenzied)
I die. I did not come to die. I come to die. Muerte. They walk too much ahead. A shade to die in, a tree. Water, wailing woman, La Llorona, wail me water. Penance wanders you. I wander, perdida. Water. Desert swallowing bones. Children of the walk. Los hijos. To die. This jawbone desert. Wail me water. Where is my daughter, mi hija? (Drops directly on the strip of desert cloth.)
(Stage lights begin to slightly dim to reflect evening coming on, and continue slowly, dimming until night falls, below.)
EL OTRO LADO
La Llorona, woman of many sorrows, her children gone as even here, the children of our country are swallowed by the treachery of gringo. Wind and sand are succor to no bones. Gringo Gulch, the place where sand and time leave trace of your treacheries. Los Niños Héroes of our land.
AISLARA
Keep me safe, help me. Water, Wailing Woman water, I hear you. You cry for your children, for me, you wail where there is water. I am your children, you cry for us along abandoned roads. Water, please, water. (mournfully) Aiee! Wailing Woman, cry me water.
THE OTHER SIDE
(Vehemently)
If it looks like one, arrest it, kill it. Arizona, land of the free. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, California, states of the free. Leeches upon the body politic! Build border fences clear to the sea. Drive them into severest dangers in the draught desert. Seize assets. Money to the Minutemen! guardians of the free. To the Border Patrol, night glasses, guns, mag lights for Taco heads. More drones to the border, to spy, to see, to stop. Deport men, women, children. America, love it; tonks, leave it!
EL OTRO LADO
(Fiercely)
Payoffs, ransoms, confrontations. Drones, spies, beat-em-‘n-leave-em. Paramilitary tactics and confrontations. Militarization, informants, enforcers. Corporate payoffs, substandard wages, drugs, drug lords blackmailing migrants to be their drug mules across the border, cartels, criminals with massive money. Widen the gates to make better walls. Decriminalize marijuana, put the cartels out of business.
(Stage lights dim, like moonlight upon the scene; only partial figures,
similar to highlights in a darkened room in a film)
PROFETA
The boot of the conquistador on the neck of the conquered.
EL OTRO LADO
(Lamenting)
Dead from exposure, migrants on The Devil’s Highway. Dead from lack of water. Dead from failure of La Migra, the Border Patrol:
(Chanting, elegiacally )
Reyno Bartolo: found Longitude 32 degrees, 23 minutes, 26 seconds; Latitude 113 degrees, 19 minutes, 55 seconds.
Reymundo Barreda Sr.: found Longitude 32 degrees, 23 minutes, 16 seconds; Latitude 32 degrees, 23 minutes, 16 seconds;
Reymundo Barreda Jr.: found Longitude 32 degrees, 23 minutes, 19 seconds; Latitude 113 degrees, 19 minutes, 56 seconds.
(Stage lights continue dimming)
THE OTHER SIDE
(Singing words from the corrido [rap ballad] “Estado de Verguenza” by Los Centoles)
I sing this corrido with great pain. Arizona, state of shame. Do we continue scared and mute? Or do we decide at last to scream out? It is time to stand with pride, with our voices, votes and money. For lack of moral strength and fortitude, they refuse to transform immigration, and now our people will suffer. Families will continue to be forced apart. Arizona, state of shame, what have you done with your fear?
(Stage lights to moonlight shades and shadows only)
PROFETA
Night grants reprieve from sun. Moon brings back fears and memories shadowed in the madness of a mind that cries out for relief. Dreams and spirits break. A child is born.
AISLARA
I beg you. Desert. Stars. Moon. Ghosts. The first. When desert blooms. Before the fence, before bad land. The desert blooms. The first time. The cock. The land. The crow.
PROFETA
Sex, that soft explosion, breaking in her, that terrible pleasure again and again, bursting in her.
Will her bones tell what she died of? How love broke her?
AISLARA
The scream. The thrash. It broke. Love broke. The fist. The boot. Te suplico, I beg you. She told me, forgive me God for what you made him do. Dios me pardone. The doctor. The baby. The door hit me. Again. Again. The doctor, and I fell down the stairs. The doctor said.
EL OTRO LADO
Cigar. Boots. Conquistidor has boots upon the neck.
PROFETA
Look! It is the boot of the conquistador comes through this desert desolation. The peacock struts the entryway, then drubs. The antechamber, and the mirror of her warning, the pea hen pulled into the future.
AISLARA
(Crazed, determined)
I am lost. The circle of his fists. I will be good. The circle of his fists. I will be good. The new land. We come for dreams. I will be good. We follow the crops. California to Wisconsin. I will be good. My child is born, my daughter, mi hija. I will be good. My belly is so cold. They do not follow rules. Why don’t they follow rules? No school, pobrecita, mi hija. My split tooth. I spit it. Spit it at you, you who beat me, hombre que me late. No place to pee, proprietario without rules. I squat, I pee your lettuce, pis en la lechuga.
PROFETA
(Reading from a letter left at a shrine on the Mexican border)
A note that harbinges ill will. It was left prescient at the shrine of Santo Pollero. “He is a bully and twists all his mistakes and attitudes to me.”
THE OTHER SIDE and EL OTRO LADO
(Simultaneously, pointing at each other)
You!
PROFETA
(Reading again)
“Don’t let me get broken again. I am fine until someone came again. I don’t get why he appears and why he happens. If he isn’t from you or a purpose comes, take him away.”
THE OTHER SIDE
El Presidente General, Dwight David (Ike) Eisenhower, “crusades against Communism, Korea and corruption.” In the name of The United States of America, I announce Operation Wetback, 1954. No more corruption. Send ‘em back. Fly ‘em back. Take ‘em way down Mexico way, way, way down to the south, in Mexico.
EL OTRO LADO
We are migrants treated like vermin in your backyard, to be taken far away in the cages of our removal. Return thereby impossible—until the day money comes to us from family in the U.S.
PROFETA
The notoriety of shame. The boots of the conquistadores. The confusion of days beleaguers these our countries.
AISLARA
I am caught, I am traveled back. I am lost. He backs a car. Into me. He hits. The parking lot, my shopping. No driver’s license. I wait. My daughter, mi hija. She will send travel money. I will find the cow milking where she is. I am lost. I am tired. Rest, and peace.
THE OTHER SIDE
Repatriation!
EL OTRO LADO
Deportation!
THE OTHER SIDE
Repatriation!
EL OTRO LADO
Deportation!
THE OTHER SIDE
The alien horde….
EL OTRO LADO
The huddled masses yearning….
EL OTRO LADO
(Contradictory but with a poetry of the Mexican response)
We are neighbors, we are friends, deeply connected, the only borders are the borders of our dreams.
THE OTHER SIDE
(Similarly contradictory but prosaic)
We are neighbors, we are friends, strong ties. Good trade, good transfer of goods, NAFTA. Cheap labor for work others won’t do. Kraut work in Bear Creek. Cannery workers. Milk, butter, for cheap.
(The lights begin to brighten to indicate the sun is rising)
PROFETA
The desert comes awake. Its flowers open to sun. Crows, sparrows, the mockingbird, the cactus wren, the desert swallow. Feral parrots.
AISLARA
Sleep. Now sleep. The sun time. To sleep, and so to rest.
(Stage lights begin to brighten the morning scene)
PROFETA
New century of hope. El Presidente Obama straddles dreams and the law.
EL OTRO LADO
(Bitterly)
Follow the law? Gold Rush for your private prisons. More deportations and more and more until El Presidente General is outdeported. Higher walls, bigger walls, better walls. Citizen patrols. Tattoed young men with big binoculars. Felonious assault. Mag light to bash a head for anyone on patrol.
THE OTHER SIDE
God bless America!
PROFETA
Resting place of hatreds long-engendered. Migrants tainted with blood of the poor, the stain of brown within it. The seasoned migrant traveler singled out for deportation, to go with seasoned felons and those who pose a threat to national security. Gardeners and maids comingled with terrorists.
(Stage lights become intensely brilliant as at the beginning, to give the sense of a torturous sun)
AISLARA
(Confused, with a bit of the previous crazed talk as well. Stumbling,
staggering, in front of the desert strip.)
The sun loses time. Must sleep. Second coming. When? Am I there? No, lost. Keep the peak, the left. Not lost then. I will be good. Grasshopper to jump the grass.
THE OTHER SIDE
The desert as to your mind: grasshopper on the grate of hell.
AISLARA
At the border. It doesn’t count. Seasoned migrant. (Weakly) Water. (Lies down on her side facing stage front)
PROFETA
In the mirror of the desert’s past, migrants are flown out to come back again. ¡Mira! (Chanting stanzas from Pete Seeger’s “Deportees”):
They’re flying ‘em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to come back again.
My father’s own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees.”
We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river we died just the same.
And who are these friends who scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees.”
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
(Spot light on old woman’s face. At the same time, she laughs, exultingly, crazily, affirmingly, in a last spasm of life; throwing her free arm out toward stage front.)
AISLARA
Prevail. You, my daughter. ¡Mi hija, prevalecerá!
(The spotlight is off immediately as Aislara drops to the ground. The strip of desert cloth, waving gently, is placed over the old woman. El Otro Lado falls to one knee, puts his face in his arm resting on the other one. The Other Side crosses his arms, raises his chest, and sighs. Profeta stands as stone.)
(Lights out.)
